


Glitch: Organic

by lucky_spike



Series: Midnight Bromance [1]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Clones, Gen, Lobotomy, Stabdads AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:16:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucky_spike/pseuds/lucky_spike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Derse's premier cloning facility, March 7th has arrived and with it, the day of release for Derse's newest Archagent and Draconian Dignitary. LR just wished it had all gone according to procedure.</p><p>Stabdads origin story for our two skinny Midnight Crew boys, the beginning of a spinoff series detailing their epic moirallegiance/bromance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glitch: Organic

The Queen followed the Royal Researcher as he babbled and waved her along, down the long metal gangplank of Derse’s foremost research facility. She didn’t understand half of what the man was saying of course, since most of it was biological technobabble, but she did her best to look interested, engaged, and say ‘hmm’ at the appropriate times. It wasn’t until the jargon and gibberish gave way to something understandable that she actively engaged, though her expression never changed.

“This technology could have tremendous implications for the war, your majesty,” he said, excited, stopping outside a metal door branded with various warnings and cautions. “The soldier shortage could be a thing of the past! And so affordable, since the process produces soldiers that are nearly fully grown! Could be fully grown if you’d wanted them to be!”

“And it works?” she asked, disinterestedly. Her mind was elsewhere. On the battlefields, where her country’s men – and women, too, these days – were fighting and dying in defense of the border. In the streets, where wives and girls waited for the men to come home. In homes, where broken soldiers rested and screamed themselves to sleep every night, and were asked to get up in the morning and work on the home front for the good of the nation.

In graveyards, where wives, sons, mothers, daughters, friends and grandparents buried the dead and wept.

“Of course it works,” he said quickly. “It’s been … it’s taken some time, yes, but it’s fully functional now. We’ve started a few, finished one or two. Because it’s not just the cloning process, your majesty: that was easy enough. It was the programming, you see? Certainly we can grow a soldier, but how to teach him what a normal man has 18 years of experience to learn? It took some doing, but we think we’ve got it.” He keyed a code in and laid his hand on the doorknob. “Would you like to see now, your majesty?”

She nodded. “Lead the way, RR.”

The lab’s vaulted ceiling soared into invisibility, only presumably extant based on the thick cords and wires hanging down. Her sensible heels clacked on the smooth marble, and the banks of computer monitors and fenestrated walls around her let off almost all the light in the room; bright and eerie, tinged with gold.

The gold light emanated from a long cylinder, dead center in the room. In it hung a naked boy – fifteen or sixteen, perhaps – suspended in thick, bubbly fluid that seemed to let off its own luminescence. The support braces were limp, floating in the fluid, and wires ran to his arms, his legs and – most visibly – the base of his skull. “Voila,” RR said, flourishing his arm to the tube. “The growth chamber.”

The Queen blinked, and was suddenly aware her mouth was open. She closed it immediately. “Is he conscious?”

“Hm? Oh!” The scientist held up his hands and shook his head vigorously. “Oh no, no of course not. His body is in stasis while we keep his mind occupied. He is, ah, unaware of his present physical situation.” He gestured to some of the tubes, drawing her closer. “All we do is keep him fed – parenteral nutrition, very balanced – and ensure his muscles are exercised, so that he’s able to function after his …” He trailed off, waving his hands vaguely. “Well, uh, his _birth_ , for want of a better word.”

She had stepped to the tube, her long, dark fingers drifting down the glass case. It was warm and strangely soothing. She looked to the boy, took in his slim form, the well-defined muscles along sharp lines of tendon and bone. “How is he exercised?”

“Well I’d imagine he’s sleeping right now, so there’s no biofeedback from him, so the supports are loose. Those black harness wires though – when he’s awake and the program is reading what he’s doing in the digital world, they can simulate any resistance, friction, anything we want. He can run, swim, climb, whatever he chooses. His _experience_ is that of a normal child, but it is only his mentally-fabricated body. The biofeedback from that system, though, is allowed to manipulate _this_ body, thus keeping it in shape.” He shook his head. “Quite brilliant, really; the team that came up with it outdid themselves.”

She frowned. “So his mental experience – it is the same as any normal boy’s would be?”

He frowned, thought about it, and pushed his glasses up his nose. “ _Well_ , yes and no. We’ve limited his possibilities to what the program is capable of providing. When he attempts to push outside the boundaries of the programming, he’s simply redirected. From what we’ve seen, this actually works to our advantage as it tends to generally produce very similar people. They all share the same experiences, pasts, friends and families, because they all are digitally simulated.” He sniffed.  “You get your outliers, of course, but that’s true in the rest of us normal people as well, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes it is.” She breathed. “This is horrific.”

He paled, blinked. “Your majesty?”

Her hand balled into a fist, pounded the side of the tube. “He will never have a childhood – he is doomed to share the same experiences as thousands of others – only to be woken up and have it torn away from him and revealed as lies, for what? To be cannon fodder for Prospit.” She turned to RR, who was tugging at his collar and backing up. “In a way, those lies are a mercy. It is easier to accept death when you have nothing real to live for.”

He cleared his throat. “Your majesty.” He started again, stammering at first, but picking up speed as he went. “After they’re released, we do additional programming; their purpose is hard-wired into them. We’ve been labeling them – barcodes, until we find something else – with their names and some other miscellaneous information to keep them straight. Funny thing is, they tend to have personalities. Like I said, similar but subtly different. It’s not a firm science, majesty, you have to understand, and we can make it better …”

She looked to the boy, her face composed but her eyes so sad, and said, “You’ve done well. This will provide us with a significant advantage in time. We need only hold the line until your soldiers are ready, yes?” She turned to RR. “How many, and how soon?”

“Well the cost of maintenance is significant –”

“I need numbers, RR.”

He blinked, opened and closed his mouth, and then shrugged. “With adequate funds I could perhaps have a hundred ready in two years? We could accelerate their growth; it’s expensive as hell but doable. Costs’ll drop off as we learn more and streamline, of course, and in eighteen years I should be able to have normally-grown ones, which are much cheaper.” He shifted, nervous. “I’ll need more facilities, of course. I only have ten tubes like this right now.”

“Send my Archagent the proposal.” She waved a hand, and spared one last look to the boy. “And it is only soldiers?”

He thought. “Well, no reason it has to be. It’s just a question of programming. I mean, we’ve created a whole world for them to grow up in; I’m sure we can program farmers or reporters or whatever.”

“Start,” she said, and though her voice was soft it carried the full weight of a command. “Begin immediately. Derse needs men, RR, not just soldiers. The Palace needs guards, the women …” She stopped herself and took a breath, but RR’s eyebrows quirked up. He hadn’t missed it. “The country needs this.”

“Of course, your majesty.”

She turned to leave. “And perhaps a … richer environment for them to experience during the growing process, yes?” The smile that twisted onto her lips was thin, toothy, and horrifying. “How dull the world would be if we were all the same, hm?”

-()-

RR had been right. Over the course of a thousand years, the process was streamlined, new technology was introduced, and in time Derse’s people forgot that there was a world before the clones. In more time, Derse’s people _were_ the clones.

The country ran on cloning – certainly, some Dersites managed to have children, but with the country gripped in the ravages of a millennia-old war, children were time-consuming, costly and inconvenient. Genetics were something that was picked from a catalogue and tailored to a purpose; the random-draw option of sex seemed distasteful and frightening. How did you raise a child without an in-born purpose? What if there was an _error_?

And so Dersites were created in droves, ordered from the cloning facilities as they were needed, grown and programmed and loaded into shuttles to their final destinations. Some – reporters, politicians, generals, entertainers – were sent away to school to learn how to think in the real world, and to manipulate an environment that was not pre-determined or constricted by servers’ worth of binary.

Most went to straight to war. Some lived, and experienced the world outside of the servers for years. Others experienced life like mayflies: loud, and huge, and bright and fast and very, very brief.

No one thought to complain. They’d all done it. It was the way of Derse.

-()-

“Hey LR?” A heavy-set Dersite, clad in orange coveralls, spun around in his chair, coffee in hand. His boss – skinny and nervous in his white coat – looked to him over his clipboard. “Chamber 14 is due to go today.” He looked back to his clipboard, and then to his watch. “You’re our best programmer – I’d appreciate it if you could handle that for me. I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes.”

LR sipped his coffee and shrugged. The compliment slid off him like water off a duck – he _was_ the best. He’d been doing it for long enough. “How many?”

His boss looked at him over the half-moon spectacles. “Chamber 14. It’s just the two.”

He frowned. “Jog my memory?”

“Good god, LR,” his boss sighed, shoulders sagging. “How long have you been here? _Chamber 14_. The new Archagent and the Dignitary. Her majesty’s staff is going to be here at three so get them programmed and cleaned up, alright?”

“Oh.” His eyes widened. “ _Oh_. Damn, boss, you sure?”

“LR, I don’t have time for this.” The boss strode out, coat flapping behind him. “Get ‘em set up. It’s just the two; easy stuff.”

“Well yeah, but …” LR muttered to his coffee. “It’s the Archagent. I mean, Jesus, if I fuck up …” He took a breath, and then grabbed his programmer with his other hand. “Then I won’t fuck up. I just won’t.” He continued to pep-talk himself down the clean hall to the small side-room, lit by the light of the two tubes. “They’re sixteen year-old kids, anyway. What’re they gonna do?” The door banged open, and fluorescent lights buzzed on overhead.

He set his coffee on the desk and made his way over to the tubes, looking at the boys inside. The one on the left was marginally closer, so he walked over, holstering the programmer and reaching for the tag hanging off the handle for the release hatch. “Alright, small fry, which one are you?” His eyes flicked over lines of code. “Release date March 7th, to be picked up by her Majesty’s blah blah … Archagent Jack Noir.” His brow furrowed, and he looked back up to the kid. “Kinda short for an Archagent.” He shook his head. “Whatever.” He looked to the other tube. “So you’re the Dignitary then, huh, skinny?”

He double-checked the tags, pulled out the two tattoo templates in their files, and loaded the stamp gun. Archagent first, he decided, and then while he was still processing he’d get the Dignitary done. Then he pulled out the programmer and keyed in the Archagent code – Jesus, 14578, every programmer memorized it but who the hell ever actually got to use it; LR, that’s who – and re-holstered the programmer.

He swiped his own tattoo for the release hatch, punched in the passkey, waited while the laser scanned his teeth, and then, reverent, extended one beefy hand toward the red release button. The support straps around the kid’s chest, arms and legs tightened gradually as the suspension fluid was drained, the purifier grinding and pumping it off to the next tube as soon as it dribbled through the grate at the bottom of this one.

And then the gears at the top of the tube were whirring and Derse’s next Archagent was being lowered to the release hatch. LR grabbed him and pulled him out – he was so light, and _so_ short, good God – and propped him up in a sitting position next to the tube. The Archagent slumped to the floor bonelessly.

“Aw, c’mon kid, wake up.” He hesitated – touching the Archagent just didn’t seem like something you were supposed to do, even under these fairly unique circumstances – but he hadn’t breathed yet. LR took a breath and shook his shoulder. “Wakey wakey, come on. C’mon kid, you got a country to run.”

The Archagent gasped then, and started hacking, too-pale chest jerking with retches and coughs, green eyes – huh, green, weird – flying wide open. “Get it all out, come on, you’re fine.” He held the kid on his side while the remains of the suspension fluid got pushed out of his lungs and stomach. “There you go.”

“Bluh?” The Archagent – Jack, that was his name, but damned if LR was gonna use it – asked, familiar syllables garbling in an unfamiliar mouth. “Whurlf … wharr,”

“Chill out, um, sir?” The kid blinked. No, sir wasn’t right. “Kid. Just chill. Lay back.” He laid a hand on the kid’s shoulder and pushed him back, laying him down in the slimy puddle of residual fluid. The Archagent was watching him, wary, as stood astride the skinny chest and pulled the programmer out. “This’ll clear everything up. Kinda stings but it’s alright, you’ll be fine in a minute.”

Some programmers were of the opinion that you should warn the new hires before you programmed them. In LR’s experience, though, the kids were already confused, and telling them you were gonna push a couple of stainless steel probes into their eyes never helped anybody. So he just waited for the Archagent to quiet down, said “Sorry about the discomfort,” and lunged.

The angle was perfect; it’s hard for it not to be, when you’d been doing it for years. The prongs missed the kid’s eyes altogether and cracked through the thin layer of bone at the back of the orbits and squashed straight into the frontal lobe. The Archagent struggled a little, but LR pushed his hand into Jack’s windpipe and waited for oxygen deprivation to do its work. The programming pack picked up the brain activity and dinged on.

 _Same shit, different rank_ , LR thought wryly, while the programmer clicked and buzzed and dumped whatever information an Archagent needed into the kid’s brain. Math, probably. He eased off the kid’s trachea and waited, the Archagent’s fingers twitching here and there. Good, normal. While his off hand steadied the programmer, he stamped the inside of the kid’s wrist with his tattoo.

The tone sounded, signaling the programming was done, and LR pulled the programmer out. A little blood, a couple days of black eyes, but that was it. He’d be ready to take charge of Derse in a couple weeks, were it not for the six years of additional schooling.

The Archagent laid there, bloody trails streaming from the corners of his eyes, which had fallen shut as soon as LR had released him. He’d be out for a while – maybe a half hour or so, plenty of time to get the Dignitary finished.

The other kid was taller, skinnier and, in LR’s opinion, more Archagent-ly. But then again the Archagent wasn’t built like a Dignitary either – LR had seen the Draconian Dignitary, once, when the Queen had visited – and this kid _was_. So maybe Archagents were short. Really, really short.

The Dignitary was easier, not as twitchy, and LR was able to slip the programmer in without blacking him out. He just laid there, wrists twitching under LR’s boots, a weak whimper coming from his throat, inarticulate. “Yeah, I know, kid, it sucks. Muscle through it.” At least those grey eyes were unfocused, unseeing; LR had always been freaked out by them when they _looked_ at him during programming. He always blacked those kids out.

Behind LR, and unbeknownst to the programmer, the Archagent was stirring. His eyes fluttered open, already bruising. He blinked a few times, opened and closed his mouth, and rocked onto his side, waiting for the blur of the room to come back into focus.

That guy – the orange blob – was bending over someone else, another dusty blob on the clean white floor.

The events of the next two minutes were not really LR’s fault. LR was a programmer, not a Replitologist. In the Derse Cloning Labs handbook, it was clearly stated that for all positions higher-ranked than Sergeant a trained Replitologist was to be present. LR’s boss _was_ a Replitologist, but he was an overworked, overcommitted Replitologist.

The reason he _should_ have been present, however, was about to become manifest. While errors in the cloning process were rare – very rare, almost unheard of – they did happen. And Replitologists were trained to assess all new hires before programming, to ensure the programming would be properly received, processed and stored by the recipient’s brain.

In the new Archagent’s brain, a trained Replitologist would have been able to pick up on the minor pathway deviation in the limbic system. A deviation that didn’t necessarily make the Archagent incapable of processing the programming – everything was processed exactly correctly, in fact, but that allowed the brain to do something the programming was very much opposed to: the new Archagent’s brain could _fight it_.

And when it fought off the thick sheet of procedures and numbers and commands, his brain processed what had happened. Connections fired. Cause and effect was established. Lies were realized.

And then the limbic system, swimming in adrenaline and pain and confusion, sent the rest of the brain a very clear message: _Now is a really excellent time to get very, very angry_.

LR didn’t have time to duck before the chair cracked him in the back of the head. He fell to the side of the Dignitary – 95% completed – and scrambled back, hand over the bleeding gash in his skull. “What the hell?!” he howled. The Archagent snarled at him and bent over the Dignitary, pulling the programmer from his eyes with slow caution.

“You can’t do that!” LR insisted, struggling to stand, his boots slipping in the puddle of suspension fluid. “Stop!”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” the Archagent growled. He threw the programmer clear of them, and it dashed across the floor with a sad, broken-plasticy crackle.

LR paled. “Oh, Jesus Christ.” The Archagent fell on him then, grabbing the front of his jumpsuit and twisting his skinny fingers into it, shark teeth – good lord, those were sharp – bared. “Hey, kid, chill out, it’s just procedure – you … The program wasn’t finished running!”

“To hell with the fucking program,” the kid growled. “This is how we fucking do it, huh? Follow procedure, fucking _program_ people to die?” He shook LR. “This is the great and glorious nation of Derse? _That’s_ the shit you want me to believe?”

“That’s true!” LR babbled. “It’s efficient, it’s humane, it’s –”

“ _Some of them live less than a day_ ,” The Archagent snarled, teeth snapping less than an inch from LR’s nose. “They don’t have a choice to die but they _do anyway_. You lie to them and then you _kill them_.”

“It’s how it works! We’re in a war, it’s how we have to do it for the glory of Derse! The Queen herself has spoken about it!”

The Archagent leaned in, and LR tried to shrink back from that gleam in his eyes. “ _Fuck the bitch_ ,” he snarled. LR opened his mouth again, but the Archagent – _Jack, that’s my name, Jesus what a stupid name_ – had had enough. He head-butted him. LR went limp, and Jack dropped him. And then he blinked, sitting astride the programmer.

“Well,” someone said from behind him, voice cracking and weak. “That was tremendously moving.” Jack turned, and the other Dersite propped himself up on his elbows. His dark hair hung in his face, slimy and bloody, obscuring his eyes but not, unsurprisingly, his stupidly long nose. “You have a plan for what’s next?”

“You’re not dead,” Jack said, dumbly. He wasn’t programmed – _no_ , dammit, that wasn’t it, he just didn’t _know_ – for what happened next. His brain had lumped together all his experiences – the lies, the programming and the simulation – and used them all for that short burst. Now he was lost.

“’Course I’m not dead, you idiot. I wasn’t going to _die_.” He ground the heel of his hand into his forehead. “Head’s killing me, though.”

“That’s the programming,” Jack said, automatically, because he knew the answer to that one.

“Duh.” The skinnier agent pushed himself up into a sitting position and pulled his hair out of his eyes. He looked down at himself. “I’m naked and disgusting. My brain hurts, I’m naked and I’m disgusting.” He fixed Jack with a look, and despite himself the Archagent flinched. “Thanks,” he deadpanned, the sarcasm spoiled a little when his voice cracked.

Jack frowned. “How do you feel about Derse?”

The taller boy shrugged. “S’alright, I guess.”

“Alright?”

“Lots of opportunities for ah, advancement.” He smiled serenely, grey eyes fixed on nothing. “And murder,” he said, dreamily. Jack blinked.

“What about the Queen?” he hazarded, fighting the urge to say _Giant Bitch_.

“She’s alright, I guess.”

“You don’t want to murder her?”

“What would be the point?”

“She’s a lying, manipulative bitch.”

“If you say so.” He fixed Jack with a look. “Seems like a lot of hassle to me with no clear advantage. Not like they’re going to make me Queen if I do.”

“… Good point.” Jack frowned and then stood, shaky, slipping a little on the floor. The other boy did the same, all gangly limbs and bad coordination. Jack looked up at him and then extended a hand. “Jack Noir. Archagent.”

The other boy smiled, a quiet, subdued thing, and took his hand. “The Draconian Dignitary, sir.”

“Piece of shit names are a mouthful.” He licked the front of his teeth and flexed his jaw. “Everything in this fucking country’s a mouthful. Mind if I call you Draco?”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Noir.”

“Don’t fucking call me that.” They both turned then and looked as LR shifted. “The hell do we do with him?”

“I am sure there’s some kind of procedure we’re supposed to follow.” Draco cocked his head, reptilian, and watched the older man’s every move. “Perhaps we should ask him.”

“Good idea.”

“And then,” the taller boy went on, “it’s probable that he’ll alert someone to the glitches in our programming.” He sniffed, and rearranged Jack’s hair, which had been sticking out in all directions, the fluid drying it that way. “I suggest we kill him.”

On the floor, LR looked up at them, wide-eyed and gaping. “Please …”

Jack picked up a letter opener off the desk and hefted it thoughtfully. “Talk fast, programmer.” LR did, the Dignitary standing deceptively relaxed between him and the door, the Archagent almost managing to loom over him. It was impressive, since it was clearly something that wouldn’t ever come natural to the kid. He explained where they were to go, that someone would handle them from there; clean them up, dress them, brief them, and then hand them off to the Queen’s staff. The Archagent nodded and watched him through raccoon eyes, letter opener spinning in his left hand, clear and bright against the dark skin and red swelling around the tattoo.

“Please don’t kill me,” LR concluded. “I told you everything, I swear I won’t talk. Promise.”

The Dignitary crossed over to them. “Get in the tubes,” he ordered. _Oh man, he was a sixteen year-old new hire, how could he do that already?_ LR thought desperately as he squeezed through the release hatch.

The Archagent nodded, exchanged a look with the Dignitary, and looked back to LR. “Trust us,” he said quietly, sharp teeth unzippering across his face, “you’ll thank us for this one day.” He cocked a lazy, half-assed salute. “Glory to Derse and all that bullshit.”

He swung.

**Author's Note:**

> i have so many feelings about the slick♦droog moirallegiance that i cannot even comprehend them all


End file.
